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LOVE, HOME, AND THE 
INNER LIFE 



Joy is like a bird in flight, which dips in 
passing and touches us with its wing. It comes 
from out of a far country and it tracks its way 
on high. After brief hovering it will recover 
its former altitude, its speed, and song. Its 
throbbing heart passes high over our troubled 
cities. As we watch its flight of untrammeled 
wing we wish that somehow we might capture 
that blitheness and teach it to dwell among 
men. Why should it pause but never abide? 
We would have that joy abide so fixedly that 
it would become peace. 



[HI 



LOVE, HOME, AND THE 
INNER LIFE 

BY 

ARTHUR H. GLEASON 



WITH A FRONTISPIECE IN COLORS BY 
SPENCER BAIRD NICHOLS 




NEW YORK 

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



7*0 3 






A I 



b^ 



' 



- 



Copyright, IQ14, by 

Frederick A. Stokes Company 



All rights reserved 




September, 1914 



SEP 14 1914 

©IA380345 



TO THE MOTHER 

TO THE WIFE 

AND TO THE HOUSEHOLD HELPER 

WHO MAKE THE HOME 

OUT OF THE WORK OF THEIR HANDS 

AND THE GOOD WILL IN 

THEIR HEARTS 



ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

These tiny craft came safely into haven. 
For granting anchorage we offer thanks to 
the harbor-masters, the Editors of Collier s 
Weekly, the Popular Magazine, the Chris- 
tian Herald, Harper s Weekly, the Gongrega- 
tionalist, and Pearson's Magazine. 



[vi] 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Joy ii 

Dedication v 

Acknowledgment vi 

PART I. THE COMING OF LOVE 

i. The Youngster 3 

2. Doubt 5 

3. Questioning 6 

4. Desire 7 

5. Brevity 8 

PART II. THE MAKING OF THE HOME 

1. Motto for a Home 11 

2. Life's Young Adventurers 13 

3. The Eternal Surprise 14 

4. In the Hills 16 

5. The Day's Work 17 

6. The Inner Cheer 18 

7. The Glow 19 

8. A Man's Thought of His Home ... 20 

9. A Petition at Evening 22 

PART III. FRIENDS OF THE HOME 

1. The Bible 27 

2. The' Galilean 29 

3. The Redeemers at Work 31 

4. The Lady and the Cop 32 

5. To Our Stenographer 34 

6. The Letter Carrier's Whistle ... 37 

7. The Clock 38 

8. The Elder Brother 40 

9. The Things We Seek 42 

[vii] 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

PART IV. THE LIFE WITHIN 

i. Talk 47 

2. Haphazard 49 

3. Renewal 50 

4. Some Day 52 

5. A Wish 53 

6. The Shadow 54 

7. Release . 55 

8. A Meditation 56 

9. A Nightcap .58 

PART V. ENEMIES OF THE HOME 

1. The Spirit of Evil . . 61 

2. How Long! 63 

3. Unrest 64 

4. Poverty and Riches 66 

PART VI. THE STERNER PHASE 

1. In Praise of Death 71 

2. On a Late Train 73 

3. Overheard 76 

4. The Coming Folk 77 

5. Epitaph of a Modern 78 

PART VII. IMPRESSIONS 

1. Canals 83 

2. The Wonder Book 85 

3. Immortality 87 

4. Forbes-Robertson in Hamlet .... 88 

5. Memorial Days 90 

6. The Prophet That Failed ..... 91 

7. To-day 94 

8. The Artist 97 

PART VIII. THE LOOK AHEAD 

1. Plea of the American People . . . . ioi 

2. The Answer 103 

[ viii ] 



THE COMING OF LOVE 




THE YOUNGSTER 

HE is so young and girlish that she is 
dear beyond what words can say. 
We hope she will never grow up to 
become tired and sad. We hope she will al- 
ways overflow into laughter and kisses, and 
lean down through the dark to bring a love 
that is full of wonder and freshness, bearing 
dear gifts that we thought could never be. We 
did not know that anything half so unspoiled 
would ever visit us. We pray that nothing 
will come between her joy and our sad heart, 
that is glad of her through all the hours of the 
day, because of all the true love, put into each 
little act. Not one of the hundred pretty 
things she does to show love and to make 
happy the one she loves — not one of those gen- 
tle services goes unregarded, though it would 
bring choking and tears to say Thank-you out 

[3] 



LOVE, HOME, AND THE INNER LIFE 

of the heart, each time that Thank-you is felt. 
We hope that the dear God will spare her and 
keep her, and that there will never be a mo- 
ment of pain to her because of us. May we 
be worthy of her great love, her dear playful- 
ness. 



[4] 



DOUBT 




O you love in the deep hidden places 
where your sadness dwells, and 
where the heart's loneliness is known 
to itself? Or are you, too, like the other things 
that come and go, whose only memory is ache 
and emptiness? Are you like praise and pop- 
ularity — one more mock in this outer world 
of broken dreams? One more petty treachery 
in this inner world of self-mistrust? 



[si 



QUESTIONING 




ILL you be happy in the lack of all 
life's surface things — success and the 
good word of men? Will you not 
desire the warming Gulf Stream of the 
world's approbation, comforts to surround 
you and flood your life with ease? 

Will love remain sweet in the hours of 
faltering, when high hopes waver, and the 
goal, once so clearly seen, looks too far-distant 
ever to be reached? Will love temper inap- 
peasable longing? When I think how poorly 
I can crown you with worldly offerings, I am 
shy to be beseeching you. Will love be crown 
enough? 



[6] 




DESIRE 

OME at no distant time. You have 
let loose such longing and desire that 
they must meet with you, their mate. 
Sometimes the thought of you is full of pain; 
and, then again, is gentle and peace-giving. 

Come, while yet we are fresh, and have not 
spilled our living waters. 

Come, before we both grow sterile with 
hope deferred. Why should I bring you a 
languid desire, when I could come like a tide 
inrushing? Why should you answer with 
quieted pulse, when flame might pass from 
lip to lip? 



[7] 




BREVITY 

i 

[HEN the heart opens to a perfect 
happiness and reaches out through 
its loneliness to the comforts of an 
answering love, it knows that the presence is 
fugitive. Briefly the precious thing is loaned 
us, and in the vanishing we shall learn of grief. 
The sensitive being that breathed so close at 
our side will go, as the color of the sunset 
passes. Just over the hilltop misfortune is 
waiting, and some one of the coming days will 
bear away the light of our eyes. But that brief 
visitation of peace will leave a memory to 
overleap the darkness of the days remaining, 
and the gulf of death. It is good to dwell for 
the hours, were it only of a single day, with 
one whom the heart has chosen, and to hear 
responses to our doubt and loneliness. Such 
a day would bring us on through the bleakness 
of our journey, hoping for renewal of the com- 
panionship that was so dear and all-sufficing. 

[8] 



II 



THE MAKING OF THE HOME 




MOTTO FOR A HOME 

\HIS home is dedicated to good will. 
It grew out of love. The two heads 
of the household were called to- 
gether by a power higher than they. To its 
decree they are obedient. Every tone of the 
voice, every thought of their being, is subdued 
to that service. They desire to be worthy of 
their high calling, as ministers of that grace. 
They know their peace will go unbroken only 
for a little time. And often they suspect that 
the time will be more short even than their 
anxious hope. They cannot permit so much 
as one hour of that brief unity to be touched by 
scorn or malice. The world's judgments have 
lost their sting inside this door. Those who 
come seeking to continue the harmony which 
these two have won are ever welcome. The 
rich are welcome, so they come simply. The 

En] 



LOVE, HOME, AND THE INNER LIFE 

poor are welcome, for they have already 
learned friendliness through buffeting. Youth 
is welcome, for it brings the joy which these 
two would learn. Age is welcome, for it will 
teach them tenderness. 



[12] 



LIFE'S YOUNG ADVENTURERS 




PURNING the sheltered haven, 
they dare wide spaces on untried 
seas. Eagerly they spread white 
canvas, blown upon by finer airs than any from 
the chambers of the East. Riding the dawn- 
winds, and flushed with the early light, they 
glide from the happy harbor. Golden days 
sun them on swift tides. 

As their adventure widens, they will break 
into fresh zones, there to be tested in the hur- 
ricane and thunder, in calm and drought and 
weary drifting. Pitiless misfortune will fall 
out of the firmament upon their feeble craft, 
and under them the deep will plunge and 
rear. They sail a never-ending voyage, till 
finally they come where earth's dim margin 
merges with a deeper blue. 

[13] 




THE ETERNAL SURPRISE 

LEAR the way for the young men. 
They are entering "the strong, 
flourishing and beautiful age of 
man's life." They decree the changes. The 
map of the world may be rolled up — every 
acre tramped upon and inhabited. But still 
they come claiming all the rights of the ad- 
venturer. Domains must be found for them, 
if the old earth has gone stale. If the life of 
danger and discovery is ended, then they will 
turn their hand against our secure world, and 
refashion the pleasant places. Unruly and 
turbulent, they uproot tradition and shatter 
the institutions. 

We should like them better if they fitted 
into our scheme, if they were ruddy and 
cheery and ended there. But they come ear- 
nest and critical. They jeer our failures, re- 

[14] 



THE ETERNAL SURPRISE 



ject our compromises, while we stand blinking 
and sorrowful. It isn't our idea of youth, our 
peaceful picture of what youth should be. 
The poets sing it, as if it were a pretty thing, 
the gentle possession of a golden race of be- 
ings. But it is lusty with power, and disas- 
trous to comfort. Men sigh for it as if it had 
vanished with Old Japan at the hour when it 
is ramping in their courtyard and challenging 
their dear beliefs. They are wistful for it in 
their transfigured memory, and they curse it 
in their councils. 



[15] 




IN THE HILLS 

|WO hours ago, the sun set for us 
who live in the hollow of the hills. 
The dog snores, and lifts a sleepy- 
paw; the great clock ticks with sober certi- 
tude; the fire glows and dies away. Some 
struggle, a bout in the open, the round of house- 
hold tasks — heaping high the woodbox against 
the night, and broiling the savory meats — 
long casual talk, the hearth smoke like in- 
cense rising toward the roof — and so Good- 
night. Another day has gone into the meas- 
ureless tide of days, and we have added to no 
man's suffering. So may the life of days be 
meted out. Then well-content, our wages 
taken, we can be gathered in. 



[16] 




THE DAY'S WORK 

HIS is the task appointed: 

To hold the vision of a final ar- 
rival at some fitting destination. 

To maintain undiminished a sense of per- 
sonal worthiness. 

To be defeated in each foolish dream of 
the younger life 

And so to be disciplined into a larger vision, 
made more sure by adversity. 

To be delayed for most of a lifetime, 

And then, when the release is at hand, to 
find the inner impulse dead from long dis- 
use • 

And yet to believe in the strength of the 
human spirit to surmount pain, and defeat 
malice and envy 

To believe in the gradual but all-conquer- 
ing power of good-will 

To be saddened, but not embittered 

To be beaten but not conquered. 

[17] 



THE INNER CHEEK 




F would be almost as if we had come 
back from the dead if we could look 
into the hearts of any household of 
common folk; and see with what good cheer 
they front the present life, so narrowed from 
the scope of youthful dreams; how loyal they 
are to the day's work, so shrunken from eager 
early hopes; with what patience they adapt 
themselves to imperfect companionships, less 
gracious than the bright comradery of youth; 
how invincibly the dreariest of persons face 
danger and monotony. 

If we could but see these predestined chil- 
dren, a world full of people advancing with 
head high to annihilation. The quietest of 
country communities, those peacefully plod- 
ding folk, are like the handful of Greeks, the 
small Thermopylae band, marching on the 
spears. 

[18] 




THE GLOW 

OMETIMES you see a starling in 
a winter landscape, in the bleak twi- 
light. You think of the tiny pin 
point of warmth that bird is carrying at its 
heart. Under the whipped feathers, its breast 
is glowing. It throbs out heat-rays against 
the chill and darkness. 

Here is a hint of the kinship of dumb crea- 
tures, alike those that burrow and those that 
fly. It is to see that each winged and swim- 
ming thing has its own life to lead, its allotted 
term of joy in motion, its minute area of suf- 
fering. We groping humans are in life for a 
little space along with all these warm and liv- 
ing things — together with them selected to 
rejoice under the sun and shortly to die. 



[19] 



A MAN'S THOUGHT OF HIS HOME 




ERE, alone in the waste, he is neces- 
sary. Here it is he, and no other, 
whose coming is awaited, whose sep- 
aration is grieved for. Elsewhere it matters 
little that he comes or goes. Here he can 
tell his loneliness. Here failure is revealed 
without shame: — sin confessed, and forgive- 
ness found. In this deep life of trust there is 
a sharing in all things with her who carries 
the precious detailed work of the home. 

Returning, let him bring to her, who is more 
attentive than a stranger audience, some of the 
color of the passing day, some of the motion of 
life's traffic, back to the stillness of the little 
home. So that ever his coming will be known 
by a brightness, making the longest evening 
tremulous and quick with the busy scene and 
the tumbling thousands of street and office, 

[20] 



A man's thought of his home 

No gifts of life can weigh against the per- 
fect gift of brooding tenderness. How guilty 
the feeling that any foolish word of blame and 
irritability should be visited on one so sensi- 
tive and caring. The loveless word can wreck 
an evening that began happily, light-heart- 
edly, till the forehead is anxious with worry, 
and the eyes are troubled with tears. 

Cleanse the man of the selfishness that fails 
to safeguard evenings of companionship, eag- 
erly awaited through weary hours. 

Make him worthy of that hovering of love. 

Bring him to the quiet place of fulfillment 
with a quickening of the breath, a lift of the 
heart outflowing in affection. 

Let fair ways of courtesy prevail between 
them both. 

Let there be no settling to accustomed 
things, to a saddened silence. 

Preserve the faith with which the hours of 
courtship throbbed. 

[21] 




A PETITION AT EVENING 

FTER the weariest day, the evening 
comes, full of peace. Just now it is 
descending upon the earth beneath, 
to pour out illimitable quiet. Into the stricken 
streets and sorrowful homes calm will flow, 
and never a sufferer in all these millions but 
will feel a little of that soothing. Restless 
heated life of mortals, alike with the un- 
troubled life of the forest, bathes in the cool- 
ness and silence. 

Such is the gift of peace we ask for the 
spirit within us that is tired and grieved. 
With the oncoming of the night, we would 
have calm for our fret and loneliness. Out 
of bereavement and manifold failure, we long 
for some presence into which we may come, as 
grieving children turn toward the mother and 
the home. From the cares of this world, the 

[22] 



A PETITION AT EVENING 



blight of failure, the unrest of our inner lives, 
we implore release and healing. To that 
presence, we would bring all the sadness for 
friends dead or far-distant or neglectful, all 
the hurt of love unrequited. 



[23] 



Ill 



FRIENDS OF THE HOME 




THE BIBLE 

ERTAIN of our wise men of to-day 
have shaded away sin till it becomes 
an expression of temperament. They 
tell us that we sin because our grandfather 
sinned, and because our home is situated in 
the wrong block. These are clever words of 
clever comforters, and surely they ought to 
wipe away forever the tears from our eyes. 
But we do not ask that our sin shall be ex- 
plained. We wish forgiveness and a fresh 
start. In the Book which we no longer read, 
there are no soft words about sin. But the 
way out is shown. And here, too, is comfort 
in plenty for man broken by his toil and his 
grief. 

When again will any company of writers 
say the things they know in such telling words 
— the boy far from the faces of his home and 

[27] 



LOVE, HOME, AND THE INNER LIFE 

far gone in shame. Much is swept away be- 
tween us and them, but not one accent of 
Naomi's voice is lost to us, and still the "Turn 
again, my daughters," is as wistful as when it 
breathed through the alien corn. 

What richer consolation are we hungry for 
that we turn from Judea? 

Is our science so acute that it has banished 
failure from man's life? 

Have our ships sailed so far that they have 
revealed to us a braver continent than the 
fields where pain once reigned? 

Has the human heart changed under the 
wear of the centuries, so that sin no longer 
seeks forgiveness, and grief has no need of a 
comforter? 



[28] 




THE GALILEAN 

^|gyfO his lovely spirit we bring our sad- 
ness and our frailty. His gentle 
thought knows no alien races, no 
outcast men nor women. He gathers us all, 
Jew and Gentile, toil worn and disinherited, 
within the healing of His love. We need His 
homely ways, who had no scorn for unsuccess. 
We need His simple speech, whose words 
could touch the heart of grief. He told us 
whither we go. He told us that we go to a 
place like a father's house, a place with room 
enough for all. Many years ago, with a ten- 
der ministration, He took away the hurt from 
troubled hearts, and still the thought of Him 
brings comfort for what is bruised with striv- 
ing and comradeship for what has never been 
at home in life. The journey is sweeter with 

[29] 



LOVE, HOME, AND THE INNER LIFE 

Him in company. His care for us is more 
understanding than the heart of all other 
friends, for in the hour of need they are some- 
times very far away. His love is so sure that 
we take it for granted, so forgiving that we 
are careless of it, trusting it as we trust the 
sun continuing in the heavens. It sends out its 
gentle rays into the immense emptiness of life. 
It would wait, sorrowful and full of remem- 
brance, through a lifetime of years. Inside its 
golden circumference it includes all the wide 
areas of the human spirit, rising through the 
radiance of youth to manhood's term of 
power, and falling away to the final dissolu- 
tion. 



[30] 




THE REDEEMERS AT WORK 

S one watches them, so eager in their 
quest, there are times when the mind 
leaps clear of the years, and remem- 
bers the old straggler of Athens wrestling with 
truth, just outside the city wall by the brink 
of the flowing river. For a moment can be 
seen all the long line of the patient, who have 
scanned the stars, and studied the slums, 
fought disease, sung songs, gone dauntless into 
peril: — dreamers all, who have mapped out 
the life of the spirit and given earth a braver 
destiny. 



[31] 




THE LADY AND THE COP 



HE policeman, Garrigan, was walk- 
ing his beat on a side street in the 
largest of our cities. Soon he came 



upon a group of children scattering before a 
dog which was frothing at the mouth and sink- 
ing its teeth in the calf of a young girl's leg. 
Garrigan had put on his big yellow mitts that 
morning because the day was cold. He 
plunged his right hand down the throat of the 
dog and broke its jaw. The dog's teeth tore 
through the glove and bit to the bone the po- 
liceman's hand in three places — on the back 
of the hand and on two fingers. The little 
girl ran home to her mother. The children 
returned to their play. The policeman gath- 
ered up the dog and put it in a canvas bag, and 
started for the station-house. Meanwhile 
there had been a silent witness to the incident 

[32] 



THE LADY AND THE COP 



— a kindly faced, middle-aged woman. She 
had seen a crowd of children in terror and one 
in danger. She had seen a pretty rescue. And 
in the making of the rescue she had seen a man 
hurt. Swiftly and surely she chose that ele- 
ment of the situation which appealed to her. 
She chose the dog. 

"Officer," she said, "what are you going to 
do with that dog? He is suffering." 

"I am taking him home as a pet for the chil- 
dren," replied Garrigan. 

"You don't need to be uncivil to me," said 
the woman, showing her credentials as a mem- 
ber of the Society for the Prevention of 
Cruelty to Animals. "You see who I am. Are 
you going to shoot the dog?" 

Garrigan swore at her, and hastened to re- 
port to the captain. In the rear of the station- 
house Garrigan shot the dog. Then he got 
time off and went over to the hospital, where 
they cauterized his three wounds. The next 
day he was on his beat again. 

[33] 




TO OUR STENOGRAPHER 

HO else knows us half so well? She 
has heard all that we have said, and 
then made notes of it, and her fing- 
ers have glided over our thoughts for years. 
She has read our incoming letters. She knows 
who pleads with us for help, and what we do 
about it. She scans the sharp things said by- 
anonymous enemies who stab us through the 
mail. She wards off undesirable citizens, and 
flatters the self-importance of persons who will 
speed our career. Do we write frankly or eva- 
sively — she follows the straight-hewed line, 
or the curve of our deviousness. Are we cour- 
teous only to the powerful, or is our treatment 
even to all who come seeking? The woman 
at our elbow, hammering out our paragraphs, 
is a clear-eyed witness. Over the telephone 

[34] 



TO OUR STENOGRAPHER 



voices drift in from the world of pleasure, 
and the tone of each is caught and judged by 
the receiving ear, before our presence is ac- 
knowledged. She knows whether our friends 
are worthy. Is the home happy? — She knows 
it. 

She notes our tricks of person — the em- 
phatic way in which we bite our fingernails. 
Our good temper, our clean breath, fly further 
than we guess. She is familiar with the stale 
phrases we scatter over the thousand routine 
letters, and she is gladdened when we light 
up the languid page with an unspoiled turn. 
Without a moan, she listens to our struggle 
with a retarded thought, though she could 
have rescued the sentence when we began to 
splash. 

She is aware when we have tumbled out 
from a laden desk to a World's Series ball 
game. She, too, would enjoy Mr. Baker's 
versatility, but she wades through our debris 
till twilight. She could keep our tardy cor- 

[35] 



LOVE, HOME, AND THE INNER LIFE 

respondence up to the minute, but she has to 
time her efficiency to our limitations. Never 
outpacing us, she is as loyal in the background 
as our shadow. 



[36] 



THE LETTER CARRIER'S WHISTLE 




ERHAPS the sweetest sound in the 
city is the liquid whistle of the post- 
man. Like the trill of a bird, it calls 
us first to expectation, then to contemplation. 
It heralds news and the advent of a friendly 
visitant. Its throaty music is laden with sur- 
prise. As it comes up the street, faint and 
far, then clear and arresting, it trails distant 
dear ones who are throwing out their greeting 
from over seas, and across a continent. 



[37] 




THE CLOCK 

IGH in a court-house tower in the 
greatest of our cities, a clock has 
given the time to several generations 
of men. By day, black hands on a white face 
are visible down the streets and avenues that 
radiate from the triangular court-house which 
uplifts the tower and its time-keeper. That 
bland face in the sky sends a busy neighbor- 
hood out to their duties. It starts the news- 
boy on his rounds with his sheaf of penny 
papers. It keeps tab on the loiterer leaning 
against the railing far below, or half-slumber- 
ing on the steps. Girls of the department 
stores, scurrying to work, glance up at the 
early morning face and slacken as they see 
that the day still gives them a portion of grace. 
Motormen, clanging their way through 
choked traffic, speed up their laden compart* 

[38] 



THE CLOCK 

ments, under the threat of those ongoing 
hands. 

By night the tower is a pillar of light, and 
time to a fractional minute can be read for 
half a mile. With a fire in its belly, the clock 
throws its beams into the naughty world of 
midnight, speeding the tardy lover, rebuking 
the roisterer who staggers past its base as it 
circles toward the new day. And one hour 
later it instructs the corner tavern that the 
pleasant evening is ended, and time is for 
turning out of doors the befuddled customer, 
mumbling in his cups. It seems to those who 
have lived in sight of this sure-footed and 
lofty witness, that it will conduct their jour- 
ney to the end. 



[39] 




THE ELDER BROTHER 

HERE was love in the heart of 
Mary, the Mother. A love so pure 
and intense that it nourished the lit- 
tle heart throbbing close to hers, till its own 
power of loving reached across all races of 
men and divers tongues. All other loves of 
incompleteness lag under distance. They are 
partial, lacking that large self-sacrifice which 
can daily die to its own. More than many in- 
ventions and tunneled rivers, the people crave 
a comforter. And still the Christ comes. He 
answers our longing for one to forgive our 
waywardness, and be kindly to our hurt, as 
restlessness grows into calm when the shadows 
of the hills lie broodingly on the path of tired 
feet. He takes this world of emptiness and 
gives it back to us full of friendly meanings. 

[40] 



THE ELDER BROTHER 



Sadness and failure were the familiar com- 
panions of his earthly days, so his words are 
tender and moving. Those who hear them 
say: Here is one more who knows, who has 
gone the road of sorrow. 



[41] 




THE THINGS WE SEEK 

\E seek a social order where men of 
good will are in the leadership, and 
youth shall continue its hardy enter- 
prise through long and plenteous years. 

We desire a society that is orderly and in- 
nocent, and touched with a blitheness that 
now rarely visits these sad stretches of mor- 
tality. Afar from this place of our failure, 
already we each of us cherish a retreat, some 
sun-warmed spot, where there is a fulfillment. 

We would extend that hidden place of 
dreams till its peace is spread abroad, and all 
peoples are sheltered where once we brooded 
alone. 

We would fashion a world of beauty where 
we take our joy of the fresh morning lifting 
the grassest The earth grows stale with our 

[42] 



THE THINGS WE SEEK 

baser uses: the face of it tarnished with our 
gain and mastery. 

We would recover the hillsides and forests 
to their former greenness, and lead back that 
charm of the ancient world, till the land is 
again as beautiful as the unchangeable sea. 



[43] 



IV 



THE LIFE WITHIN 



TALK 




EN with a glee-club voice, folks 
with the friendly temperament, 
prodigal sons with personal charm, 
these and such as these need no first aid to 
genial hours. But for many persons every- 
where, leading their surface life, there comes 
a loneliness stabbing through. In the vast- 
ness of New York the single life can merge 
its suffering. It is hidden in hotel lobbies and 
on the restless streets. It is not self-conscious 
and conspicuous as in the village. But the 
Ferris wheels, the cafe lights, the smells, and 
noise of revelry offer us no final escape from 
loneliness. We need real talk to set us free. 
By ceaseless experiment in establishing com- 
munication with the spirits of the living we 
lay open approaches to our inner life, and 
permit ourselves to be stimulated by new- 

[47] 



LOVE, HOME, AND THE INNER LIFE 

comers, and loved by well-established friends. 
Expression cleanses. If we fail to get it on a 
dark matter — a hate, a jealousy, a fear — we 
are led to obsession and despair. That furtive 
look in the eye of the unbalanced declares one 
who has concealed some piece of slyness. If 
Othello had spoken instead of choking at 
the throat, there would have been less tragedy. 
By such daring in our intimacies we leap over 
the shyness that hinders, and gain rare hours 
of revealing talk, and win a friend or two. 
The best and most various man is he who has 
brought the larger number of these wayward 
yearnings and unrealized bits through the tis- 
sue of obstruction. 



[48] 




HAPHAZARD 

HERE is a wayward element in life 
which makes the turning of a street 
corner an adventure. There is some- 
thing amazing in the squandering of power 
and charm, at random. We all have glimpses 
of rare women in sordid places. Once we saw 
a barmaid in an English inn whose face was 
lovely in its young beauty. And there she 
went answering drunken orders and spending 
that early bloom among heavy-footed louts. 
In any community there are several women of 
grace and fine ability burning up a fragile 
strength on rough tasks. Those unobserved 
and vagrant perfections touch the sober jour- 
ney with flashes of color. They mean that life 
refuses to be organized, has no bureau of reg- 
istration for beauty, no central clearing station 
for its multitudinous wonder. The next inn 
at the forks of the road may be reserving for 
us a loyal friend or a fresh encounter. 

[49] 



RENEWAL 




N the heart of the child lies the pic- 
ture of a perfect world. His love is 
unwounded, and he thinks that all 
about him is a friendly place. Life is at 
pains to set up that image of perfection and 
innocence in each new generation, and 
then is careful to smear it over with the reality 
of what follows. It is as if an artist should 
paint his canvas only to wipe off his colors in 
endless rotation. 

Why the labor, if there is no permanence? 
Why that first trust in man, that faith in vir- 
tue's victory? Why is the father able to trans- 
mit to the child what is more joyous than any 
dream or experience of his own mature life? 
Why does no taint of the toil and sin of the 
adult earth ever reach through the seed of 

[50] 



RENEWAL 



the parent to the infant life, and touch it to 
apprehension? 

Does the heart, then, generate its own va- 
pors, which rise to veil the steady shining of 
the early days? Or are we but the echo to 
circumstance, to give back the tone and accent 
which event casts toward us? 

And if we are so wrought upon by time, 
then why the unwearied repetition of the fair 
illusion? Is it the faint memory, soon suc- 
cumbing, of what the earth once was? Or 
is it to body forth a pattern of what our world 
should be? 



[51] 




SOME DAY 

OMETIMES we wonder if the 
world will one day win a sense of 
peace and beauty, or if we are to 
whizz and yell and advertise till the end of 
time. Will humble pleasures forever seem 
tame and quiet ways unsuccessful? Or are we 
mad only for a little term, and shall we dwell 
with spacious and serene things after this 
fever cools? Shall we soon turn from the clat- 
ter of these days, the scorn of what is simple- 
hearted, the haste and noise that drown out all 
gentle voices? Some deeper, sweeter tone 
than the whir of machines and the clamor of 
the streets will dominate the time to come. 
We shall recover our knowledge of the silent 
passage of a summer's day, the swift wind- 
swept procession of early autumn clouds, the 
breaking waves that wear away the beach. 

[52] 




A WISH 

|0 work under constant thwarting, 
but to work without bitterness; to 
live each day with kindliness when 
our strength is exhausted and there is little 
sweetness in our lot; to keep hold of sure val- 
ues when the individual effort has gone awry; 
to know that we are misplaced, and yet that 
the eternal order is undisturbed; to know that 
justice may be delayed for a century and still 
arrive in ample time. 



[53] 




THE SHADOW 

HEN life advances with a supreme 
gift of love, we know it will never 
be granted for long. We know that 
something will smite down and intercept 
the offering, that somehow the gift will 
be changed into a sacrifice, that loss is in store 
for the heart that reaches out too anxiously. 
Some bitterness out of the sky will visit that 
felicity. We are hungered all too much, so 
the bread of life is soon withholden. We 
thirst, but the waters are not released for us. 
Our eagerness, born of our need and longing, 
will never dwell with the all-sufficing. Slow 
death or sudden death, it comes at last, rob- 
bing us of what is more precious than the sun- 
light. 



[54] 




RELEASE 

HERE is freedom in a beach day 
full of sunshine, and overhung by 
skies of a brilliant blue. The wilt 
of frenzied streets is forgotten and far-away. 
Coolness walks up from the wide fields of 
salt. It is good just to sit and watch the danc- 
ing of those waters, and the sparkle of light 
on each mounting wave-peak. It is better yet 
to swing in the tides, to glide with a free over- 
arm down the path of the waves, cleaving the 
water with slow r even stroke. 

If you are true lover of the sea, you will 
wait for the night. Under foot, the shoe, as 
it strikes wet sand, is phosphorescent, and re- 
ceding waves leave a faintly luminous outline. 
Overhead, all the stars in their loveliness are 
drawn across the heavens in patterns of bright 
gold. And at dawn a wan frost is on the marsh 
grass. 

[55] 




A MEDITATION 

E have failed to think ever worthily 
of the men about us, our brothers. 
We have let our tongue loosen 
anger and irritability against those with whom 
we work, sad as we, and, like us, strug- 
gling. In this cleansing of confession, we 
know that to-night and now our sin has passed 
away. Again thy gift of peace is upon us. 
And we turn from our wrongdoing, healed. 
There is no power, less high than thee, no an- 
swer less august, that can free us utterly from 
the failure of our striving. 

And, yet more, we ask for peace to our 
troubled mind. Free us from what will dull 
our sense of thee. Let no mischance assail the 
citadel of our inmost life. Let tumult beat 
vainly against this center of quiet. Banish 

[56] 



A MEDITATION 



our hurry. Restore to us the steadiness of thy 
will, the hush of thy in-dwelling. 

Help us to make an end of the sorrow that 
is in the land, the hurt that each heart carries. 
Use us in just this place, which may be lowly, 
at just this time, which seems unworthy. 
Teach us that the times are in thy hand, that 
we are to work cheerily, and live undismayed 
by the vastness of thy task and the slowness of 
thy method. Reveal to us that justice will at 
last prevail, and that thou art unworried 
through all the flurries of war and selfishness. 



[57] 



A NIGHTCAP 




ET our last thought of the evening 
be one of thanksgiving that, in the 
few hours of the day now ending, 
so much good will has been shown to us. 
There have been well-wishers, ready to 
further every effort of our hands and respon- 
sive to each impulse of our friendliness. We 
have received much kindness within a little 
time. We cannot doubt the good in all men 
when those whom we know have helped us to 
happiness. 

Let us be glad of the peaceful home — the 
shelter itself shutting out the night of storm — 
and the loyalty of the comrades, housed with 
us, giving of their steady affection. 

Let us be comforted, knowing that we shall 
sleep in peace, forgiven for our shortcomings, 
and that we shall waken to work and the fresh 
chances of the morning, with failure forgot- 
ten and the scene newly set for our endeavor. 

[58] 



V 



ENEMIES OF THE HOME 




THE SPIRIT OF EVIL 

E see the world without at odds. We 
see disaster invading the innocent 
household, humiliation shaming the 
simplest of men, a furtive malevolence wreak- 
ing itself upon sweet and lovely things. To 
behold a noble mind stricken with insanity, 
to hear those whom we love spoken of with 
treachery, to know of kindliness and good will 
betrayed and laid low — these, the experiences 
of every mortal man, contain elements of in- 
tolerable injustice. We are driven to think 
that, hidden somewhere behind the clouds, or 
in the recesses of the darkest night, there is 
perhaps one lurking who overlooks the earthly 
life with a rich and secret scorn. How he 
must sometimes tumble in mirth, as he devises 
and aims one more of his petty but effective 
obstructions, and sees it reach its perfect con- 

[61] 



LOVE, HOME, AND THE INNER LIFE 

summation. More and more one is tempted 
in certain moods to suspect intention, a clev- 
erly disguised purpose running through the 
ages, and tripping the individual life. 



[62] 



HOW LONG! 




INETEEN hundred years ago, He 
gave His peace to a woman who had 
J sinned, His censure to the men who 
hounded her saddened life. But still the 
broken women are as aliens in our streets, and 
still the men, who gain their pleasure and 
their profit of them, go proudly, lifting high 
their head of power. 



[63] 




UNREST 

OMAN'S restlessness is not the spir- 
itual state of those marching to a 
victory. Restlessness is the inner 
life of those who have temporarily lost their 
quest and the sight of the goal. They are in 
Mid-Channel, where choppy seas prevail. 
Many of to-day are rushing after something 
less than their own highest. They need a re- 
turn of belief and a dispensation of authority. 
They need a religion and a home. They are 
so scattered by life as not to win an inner 
peace. Our times must give a better place 
than the harsh toil-driven home which the 
daughters dreaded, and a sweeter religion 
than that which failed to comfort the disin- 
herited. 

When woman ceases to express essential 
womanhood, when she ceases to express the 

[6 4 ] 



UNREST 



mothering instinct, she becomes a troublesome 
sex machine, a disturber of the world's work, 
a slightly exotic deflector of man's efficiency. 
Only in motherhood woman is able to win her 
own center of quiet, and man's belief in her. 
That motherhood is perhaps quite as often 
spiritual as physical. It is found in the devo- 
tion of social workers, in patient teachers, in 
nurses, in nuns. It is found wherever care 
for others is steadily practiced — that tender- 
ness and self-sacrifice of care, with its under- 
standing of sin and weakness, which is most 
movingly revealed in the mother with the 
babe, but which is shown in a thousand other 
relationships of life, by women, married and 
unmarried. 



[65] 



POVERTY AND RICHES 




T is an uncharted sea to which we 
are called — but one we all must sail. 
There are no bell-buoys for the 
reefs, and the topography of the new continent 
at the other side of the sunset is altogether 
guess-work. One thing is sure — we shall 
every one be immigrants there, some day; 
whether the coast is rockbound or fertile 
green. The quest for a more perfect right- 
eousness is never stayed. In the chemistry of 
our being something makes us hunt the gleam, 
under whatever sky, in every age. Cathedral 
builders and sweat-shop tailors are one with 
Hector of the glancing helmet in the desire 
for holiness. 

In this age in which we live, the light of 
revelation has, for a little, lighted our goal, 
has touched it with flame and passed on, hav- 

[66] 



POVERTY AND RICHES 



ing shown us the journey to which we are 
pledged. And, with each fresh gain, we thrill 
at the lift, and then sigh with weariness. But 
the fatigue is only the cry of the flesh, and the 
thrill is the prophecy of the final height. 

Two things impede the progress — poverty 
and riches. Poverty — because it gives a heri- 
tage of pain and disease, making motherhood 
sordid, and the birth of the manchild no gift 
to the future. Riches — because they destroy 
the spirit. The rich, they, the pilots, are steer- 
ing with compasses that have lost responsive- 
ness to the North Magnetic Pole. To an age 
that demands all the influences of the upper 
air, they supply a helm unwitting of the final 
direction. Our little ones are robbed of joy, 
and our masters are unaware of God. 



[6 7 ] 



VI 



THE STERNER PHASE 




IN PRAISE OF DEATH 

E may envy the dead, for we do not 
injure them in their rest. Our de- 
sire to be like them will not mar one 
hour of their quietness. In life we are too 
weary to be at peace, but with them the sleep 
is undisturbed and profound. All offending 
and feverish elements merge in the stillness 
of an endless night. There can be no grief so 
piercing but all-merciful death will enfold it. 
Bitterness itself will lie at rest. 

In the hope of that ending, we can endure 
in fortitude the sad passage of the years. It is 
sufficient to know that we shall inherit that 
gift of peace. Though sometimes we think 
that the release will be soon, still there is de- 
lay and the years go heavily. But in the dark- 
est hour, we know that it can be no long time 
till we are permitted to be quiet. No memory 

[71] 



LOVE, HOME, AND THE INNER LIFE 

will reach through to the silence of the place 
prepared — no memory to sting us, no hope to 
mislead us. No footfall will beat an echo of 
brief hope. No voice of betrayal will carry 
into that infinitude. We shall be let alone. 



f72] 




ON A LATE TRAIN 

HE long train of cars was steadily 
driving westward through a night 
of darkness. In the last seat of the 
last car, which was otherwise empty of people, 
sat a man and a woman. The light of the 
overhead cluster of gas jets was not so strong 
but the dark night poured in upon the two 
through the car window at the girl's right 
hand. Her profile was white against the 
heavy northern sky. They were young enough 
for that journey to have been the beginning 
of all good things. But they were silent as 
those who have reached the end of sweet ex- 
perience together. Now and again she looked 
out into the night with its sudden brightness 
of station lamps and the returning darkness 
which was behind and around all the little 
flickering lights of the countryside. Again 

[73] 



LOVE, HOME, AND THE INNER LIFE 

and again the brakeman wearily droned the 
name of some way station, where the train 
crunched and groaned on its brakes and then 
recovered its motion. The beat and rhythm 
of the wheels, the deserted car, and the all- 
surrounding presence of the night would have 
silenced travelers of more buoyant spirit. To 
those two it was but the setting for their inner 
mood, which no dance of lights could have 
quickened. More often than she turned and 
peered, unseeing, into the outer darkness, he 
turned toward her and looked intently at the 
sweetest face life had ever brought near to his. 
He had often been moved by that clear, firm 
profile, with the tender droop at the corner 
of the mouth, where the perfect curve of the 
lips began. He saw again those eyes of gen- 
tleness that had learned to live with sorrow till 
the liquid fullness of their gaze was wistful 
on the gladdest day. Once he touched her 
hand — that hand which had often lain soft 
and throbbing in his, like a captured bird with 

[74] 



ON A LATE TRAIN 

its beating heart. And at the touch her eyes 
were filled with tears. It had always been so 
with her that the lightest touch awakened her 
to swift responses, to ardor and suffusion of 
color through all her being. As quickly as he 
had reached out in his longing he withdrew 
his hand from the contact. Even so he was 
too late. But soon she returned to her silent 
brooding and wistfulness of waiting for the 
journey to be ended. Suddenly, to each of 
them, the train jerked itself to a halt, the 
brakeman aroused himself, the man said 
good-bye. 



[75] 




OVERHEARD 

N the village by the lake a woman 
was softly playing and singing. 
Over and over she went with her 



quiet tune as if she were telling her happiness 
to herself, a happiness which she was half- 
fearful might be envied and invaded if over- 
heard. So she gave her music gently. So she 
subdued her joy and the melody that it might 
escape avenging tongues. 



[76] 




THE COMING FOLK 

ILL they find the road to happiness, 
and is it a broad highway for the 
tread of a host, or just a narrow trail, 
smothered in wild roses, hidden from many? 
Will they devise some new and finer art than 
sad music and fading paint and limping words 
— an art by which each man relieves the hid- 
den pain and stands revealed to his fellows 
through no intervening veils, no darkling 
glass? 



1771 



EPITAPH OF A MODERN 




ERE rests one: — 

Who preferred worldly failure to 
inner disquiet, and combat to resig- 



nation 



Who did not compromise, not even when 
the compromise would have brought him 
praise of men and enrichment for a strait- 
ened life 

Who, having learned the terms of the game, 
and finding them terms to which he could not 
sign 

Preferred to play his own game, single- 
handed. 

Who learned at last that no one else can 
make decision for a man, 

Because the stake is the man's own life 

Who longed for rest, as the footsore trav- 

[78] 



EPITAPH OF A MODERN 



eler longs for the inn and the friendly wel- 
come ■ 

But who endured life without one thought 
of escape till he received an honorable dis- 
charge. 



[79] 



VII 



IMPRESSIONS 



CANALS 




F you cannot win through to the 
great woods where trails are green, 
there is nothing else so good 
as a towpath for the walker who loves 
silence. No motor cars tear up a tow- 
path and drive swirling dust down the 
nostrils of the panting traveler. Nothing un- 
seemly invades that quiet bank. What a 
river used to be, a canal now is. It is the gently 
winding home of dreams. Untroubled by 
traffic, unfretted by speed launches, it spreads 
its calm length along, under the shadows of 
old willow trees. And yet, with all its pool- 
like placidity, it is as surely on the march as 
if it churned with motion. By contenting its 
soul and abiding, it comes to the hidden source 
or the bright city as certainly as if it pressed 
forward in heat and frenzy. The canal rests 

[83] 



LOVE, HOME, AND THE INNER LIFE 

in its own length, ample enough to stretch 
from its source to its goal. Why should it 
fume and chatter when, motionless, it spans its 
origin and destiny? On its bosom are borne 
the great squat canal boats, laden with coal 
and with families of peaceful folk, who smoke 
and knit as their craft goes gliding toward a 
port Sinewy, clever canoeists go down its 
gentle course, leaving the silence of air and 
water unbroken as they found it. Every few 
miles a lonely fisherman thrusts out his pole 
and holds it level with the scanty depths. 
These men never weary of the quietness, 
touched with that flicker of hope which rests 
like a star on the tip of their rod. Twice or 
three times in twenty miles you will come upon 
groups of boy bathers, who strip as swiftly 
as a sword slips out of sheath and who dive 
as neatly as the sword slips back into place. 



[84] 




THE WONDER BOOK 

BOOK of books has recently been 
on public view; full of pictures in 
fair colors of miracle workers and 
Bible characters. It is called "Offices of the 
Virgin." It was illuminated by Guilio 
Clovio for Cardinal Farnese. Its loveliness 
has been enriched by the pressure of hands 
upon it that lifted it from its hiding-place; 
eyes that have read it page by page, and rested 
on the very word where you are now gazing; 
breath that has blown upon the leaves to turn 
them; touch of the finger that, marveling at 
the whiteness of the figures, so tiny and dis- 
tinct, has searched out their curve and smooth- 
ness. These memories are an encompassing 
presence to the book, and give it worth beyond 
its physical size. 

It has outlived many lives of men, and still 

[85] 



LOVE, HOME, AND THE INNER LIFE 

continues. The cannonading of several wars 
has not disturbed it in its archive to rustle one 
leaf in its folded sleep. Princes have been 
deposed, and strange governments lifted up. 
But the line of hobbling custodians has gone 
on tending it, and always it will have a keeper 
as long as the pages hold together. Time is its 
only enemy, and its unsullied parchment has 
already outlasted three centuries. It will still 
be telling of the saints, when our noisiest deeds 
have ceased to rumble. Those figures of the 
holy ones are so gay and young that they live 
on as if in an arrested springtime. 



[86] 



IMMORTALITY 




T is becoming increasingly hard to 
find where death achieves its vic- 
tory. Man has perfected a hundred 
devices to perpetuate his mortal acts. His 
voice is caught on rolling disks, and held im- 
perishable for the ears of his grandchildren. 
Gestures of his hands, the pantomime of his 
face, are recorded on films that can be laid 
away for a century and then unspun and pro- 
jected on screens. If the breath of his body 
and his chance actions are so worthy of long 
continuing, then his spirit, that is finer than 
they, may be even more persisting, and im- 
press itself on what is more durable than wax. 
If death cannot carry away into oblivion 
tones of his voice nor the spectacle of his ways, 
it does not become us to doubt that death does 
not scatter spirit beyond recall, nor altogether 
end what was so ardent. 

[8 7 ] 



FORBES-ROBERTSON IN HAMLET 




E comes with manners of fair court- 
esy, a poise of bearing, the de- 
meanor, so eager and gentle. And 
over it all in calm level flight the intelligence, 
which outsoars matter and plays upon it from 
an inaccessible height. The speaking voice 
is the loveliest of instruments for carrying 
sound to the heart of man. And when again 
shall we hear a voice like his, all compact of 
music, flexible in cadence — and that natural 
organ freighted with the thought of silent 
years. His voice lifted the verse, bearing it 
with throbbing wings from troubled regions 
to the final silence. The greatest work of the 
greatest man in the span of human conscious- 
ness was here rendered so that never the ac- 
cents, laden with pain, stoop under their pre- 
cious burden. 

[88] 



FORBES-ROBERTSON IN HAMLET 

To enter his theater is to rediscover that 
great gentleman, Hamlet, gracious, ready to 
be loved, hemmed in by baser natures, desir- 
ing to flourish, and nipped by a tainted air. 
Where for him was there escape in this world? 
So he is swiftly drawn to his ending, and in 
that brief earthly interlude before his spirit 
regained its felicity, he breathed out the sweet- 
est words of human tongue. 



[89] 




MEMORIAL DAYS 

|HESE are the days when the ancient 
memories flay us. We are visited 
by those whom we love with a love 
that hurts because they are not here, and will 
not be here ever again. And once more we 
see those who are far separated by the sad mis- 
chances of life, the wide spaces of distance 
and the bitter speech. Those presences are 
close at hand, and their lightest word of long 
ago is in our ears. The look that told what 
the heart was troubled with, some tender ges- 
ture of their hands which smoothed away care 
— all little things out of the past, which it was 
theirs to say and do and give — they fill these 
days with the aching sense of the loveliness 
that has perished from our sight and holding. 



[90] 



THE PROPHET THAT FAILED 




E has a frenzied time of possession 
when the spirit of wrath and 
J>1 prophecy flames within him. Then 
the mystical moment passes, leaving a foggy 
trail. He forgets what he has said. He for- 
gets that he has worked a change upon his 
hearers, who are watching with a kindled 
hope for the establishment of his impassioned 
program. He passes on, while gradually 
their hearts turn against him. For he alone 
of prophets is forgetful. John the Baptist 
and Cassandra and others of the holy band 
lacked for earnest hearers. But this man wins 
hearers, then runs around the corner to an- 
other audience with another vision discharged 
from his overwrought temperament. When 
pulled back to his first platform, he refuses 
to explain. A crusade appeals to him only so 

[91] 



LOVE, HOME, AND THE INNER LIFE 

long as he is under the emotional glow of its 
opening performance. He grows sulky under 
punishment A promise evaporates in the 
bright beckoning of a fresh sensation. He is 
not a liar, and he is not dishonest and he is not 
insincere. He has the temperament of a sen- 
sitive artist in a business office, and his quiver- 
ings and his vagaries are of necessity recorded 
in the ledger. 

And the inmost reason for this maladjust- 
ment between prophetic frenzy and executive 
accomplishment is plain to read. One more 
modern smokes too much, drinks too much, 
talks too much. He lets himself go in public 
and private, just as the gusts of his uncon- 
trolled nature propel him. He pounds the 
table and swears action, then subsides into his 
winning ineffectual talk. The promised ac- 
tion is forgotten by all but his hearers. He is 
an Alcibiades in New York, rushing on, just 
rushing on, with a train of applauding con- 
vivial youth. But there is no direction to the 

[92] 



THE PROPHET THAT FAILED 

movement: it is merely a swirl, with the fas- 
cination of its own momentum. 

With each group he feels himself the 
prophet. There stirs in him the old yearning 
to set these men on fire for the city's good. 
The definite program has slipped from him. 
But he sees himself again the Plumed Knight, 
and he makes them see him so. Each week it 
grows harder in the tobacco haze and through 
the blur of the beer to recreate the angel. It 
is still the same man, charming, compelling, 
but the grace-notes of his musical drawl have 
too long promised large things unperformed. 



[93] 




TO-DAY 

LONG - DRAWN - OUT attempt 
to stifle the human spirit has been 
made through the last hundred 
years. All that early gladness which had 
lifted the race over dark times was submerged, 
till men lost the faith of it, and came to believe 
that life was as they saw it, a thing of routine, 
with a brooding sense of failure and insecurity. 
That spirit of mute acceptance became wide- 
spread, and a race of clerks arose who ac- 
cepted their lot as if it were a Hindu caste, 
without earthly escape. 

The play of Merry England, creative ca- 
thedral building of the twelfth century, shep- 
herd life of still earlier times, the kinship with 
nature that peopled rivers and groves with 
imagined troops of light-footed creatures — 

[94] 



TO-DAY 



these lived for us only in books, reflected light 
of a departed glory. What a change to the 
machine-made modern world with its pain 
and decay, its sodden toil and commercialized 
merriment. How the human spirit was home- 
sick alike in the market-place, the church and 
the pleasure resort. At the very moment when 
man had mastered his environment, torn 
power out of the void and leashed it to his 
uses, just then he turned his world into a 
weariness, and humbled his spirit below the 
consciousness of the brutes that lead out their 
life of swiftness. To come so far and then to 
bog! It seemed time for a hearty tribe of 
Goths to stride down with their fair-haired 
phalanxes and scatter the stale civilizations. 
But, inside the race, the upspringing has 
come. Man begins to recover festivals of 
community mirth. The age regains assurance 
that we are dearer to the heart of being than 
the roll of the planets and the calm green 
beauty of the natural world. Men again b§- 

[95] 



LOVE, HOME, AND THE INNER LIFE 

lieve that they are picked for a mission surer 
than the rise and fall of the life of the field, 
the fluttering and darting of the winged and 
swimming things. 



[96] 




THE ARTIST 

E comes to see that he is not called 
upon to resign himself to a life of 
barren routine, to bend the will to 
the arrogance of men in power, nor to accept 
their insults in patience and flatter their weak- 
nesses. The process of breaking the human 
spirit, and remaining sweet under the disci- 
pline, is not for him. He is not to listen to 
the swift savage appraisal of alien tongues. 
If it is a large talent, then he can load it with 
disease and poverty, and still it will emerge 
free and flowing. But not when it is feeble 
and trickling. And yet it may be water of the 
brook, for all that. 

So he learns at last to accept risks, to dare 
all. Underneath the shifting broken surface, 
he feels one current making for the deeps. 
That is the binding single purpose of his life, 

[97] 



LOVE, HOME, AND THE INNER LIFE 

dimly recognized, often interrupted. But al- 
ways its sure direction will return after many 
days. There is no slackening in that urge to- 
ward shaping the spectacle of men and things. 
It is long a dim pain when crushed under 
routine; briefly, a burst of joy, when called 
into full expression, with success in sight as 
a companion. And then comes the patient 
subdued effort to keep it alive, when less easy 
times have befallen. 

Life is a troubled journey for one who 
would serve beauty — "to be perpetually hers, 
but she never his." It would be unendurable 
if the flickering illumination were smothered, 
and the meager gift slain outright. 



[98] 



VIII 

THE LOOK AHEAD 




PLEA OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

f|OJF in this season of our test, we, 
who are many peoples under one sky 
and flag, desire afresh to dedicate 
ourselves. 

May we be mindful of what was strong and 
pure in the purposes of those who shaped our 
nation from rude origins, and mindful of the 
yet vaster purpose that permitted our people 
to survive tribulation and enter on the larger 
days. 

May we share the vision that is in the young 
men, the hopes that yearn through obscure 
lives. 

May we rise clear of the summer's heat, the 
anger of men, this war of words. 

In a sweeter air than any that breathes 
through convention halls, may we seek, and, 
seeking, find the clarified judgment. 

May we surmount the littleness of daily 

[IOI] 



LOVE, HOME, AND THE INNER LIFE 

word and deed, the wrangling and the hates 
of mob and clique. 

May our thought be for the nation — far 
from gains, revenge, reprisal. In adversity 
and the sterner searchings of prosperity, it 
has weathered the gale and steered right on- 
ward. In the greatness of an idea it came to 
birth. Through bitterness it endured. Once 
again it is gathering strength that it may go on 
unhindered. 

We, the common people, were, in former 
days, source and origin of the strong sad heart 
of Lincoln. What we created there we would 
again put forth out of present need. May the 
man be made manifest, who shall direct our 
perplexed times. 

May we, as a people, be wise and patient, 
that the one large purpose, above our broken 
purposes, shall persist and conquer. 

In the calm of a great decision, may we 
choose, out of the many ways, the one straight 
way that leads to a distant goal. 

[102] 




THE ANSWER 

E need not let our hearts be troubled, 
for all that is unavailing sinks into 
rest. Every road by which men go 
dips finally into the valley. No climb, how- 
ever bold, but is touched at its close by the 
shadow; no quest in undiscovered bourns but 
ends in a resting place where tired multitudes 
are harbored. The encompassing peace of the 
silent earth waits on our fretting. There is 
nothing so harassing that it cannot be borne 
in the foreknowledge of its brevity. No dis- 
turbance nor upheaval can visit mortal mind 
when once it has been gathered to the brother- 
hood of dust. Unbearable pain leads to the 
kingdom of sleep. Suffering reigns but briefly 
with straitened dominion. Kindly opiates of 
insensibility are ever waiting close by tortured 
mind and stricken body. There is no menace 

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LOVE, HOME, AND THE INNER LIFE 

in life but recedes even at the moment of 
touching agony. The most savage disaster is 
crowned with death, and its victims in their 
writhing are suddenly released beyond calam- 
ity. That is the secret withheld from youth 
and those who go out in fresh strength to be 
racked. But the revealing years whisper that 
secret of why there is a smile on the face of 
the newly dead. 



[104] 



